Behind Iraq's concern at Gideon Sa'ar's UNSC letter

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar sent a letter to the president of the UN Security Council, in which he called for immediate action regarding the activities of pro-Iranian militias in Iraq.

By JONATHAN SPYER NOVEMBER 29, 2024 11:04

FOREIGN MINISTER Gideon Sa’ar speaks at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem earlier this month. (photo credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)

Overshadowed by the ceasefire declaration in Lebanon, a series of somewhat absurd events related to Iraq over the last week offer clues as to the underlying dynamics of Israel’s regional confrontation with Iran and its allies. These events, their comic aspect aside, cast light on both the strengths and the sharp limitations of the Iran-led regional project. 

On November 18, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar sent a letter to the president of the UN Security Council, in which he called for immediate action regarding the activities of pro-Iranian militias in Iraq, whose territory is being used to attack Israel. Sa’ar warned that Israel has the right to defend itself under the UN Charter, and called on the government of Iraq to “prevent the use of its territory as a base for attacks against other nations.”

The letter led to a sudden outbreak of concern in Iraq at the possibility of an imminent Israeli raid. The Iraqi government, via its Foreign Ministry, sent a response to Sa’ar’s letter, to the UNSC, the Arab League, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. 

The Iraqi government’s letter described Iraq, in a characterization somewhat at odds with observable reality, as “the cornerstone of stability in the region and world.” It went on to assert that “The Zionist entity’s letter to the Security Council is part of a systematic policy aimed at creating claims and excuses in an attempt to expand the conflict in the region.” The letter also noted that Iraq had been keen to exercise “restraint” regarding the use of its airspace to attack a neighboring country. 

The letter was accompanied, according to an article in the London-based Saudi Sharq al Aawsat newspaper, by rapid changes in deployments by Shi’ite militias on the ground, in anticipation of a feared Israeli attack. Ghazi Faisal, a former Iraqi diplomat, told the paper that the militias had gathered their forces in the Sinjar area of central Iraq, a vital corridor for Iran’s arms supply line to its allied militias in Syria and Lebanon. 

DEMONSTRATORS CLIMB a structure during an anti-government protest in Baghdad, last week. (credit: THAIER AL-SUDANI/REUTERS)

The Arab League, in turn, perhaps eager to challenge the general sense of irrelevance that surrounds it, then issued its own statement condemning Israel’s supposedly imminent plan to attack Iraq. In an emergency meeting on Sunday, it slammed Israel’s plan to “expand its aggressive practices in the region, including Iraq.” 

The emergency resolution adopted by the Arab League warned of the “danger of an all-out Israeli escalation that risks sparking a broad regional war that threatens security and stability in the region.”

“The resolution was adopted unanimously, with the backing of all Arab delegations, to show support for Iraq,” Qatari Ambassador to Egypt, Tariq al-Ansari, gravely informed the Qatar-supported Middle East Monitor website. 

Much ado about nothing, you might conclude. But the flurry of letters and counter letters was accompanied by a notable shift in the dynamics regarding Shi’ite militia attacks on Israel. A study by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, issued on November 26, identified a sharp decline in actions by the Iraqi Shi’ite militias over the last week, preceded by a more gradual decline over the previous month. 

The Washington Institute study notes that claimed Iraqi Shi’ite militia attacks on Israel reached a high point of 41 attacks in the week of October 29-November 4, 2024. They then declined to around 30 in the subsequent week, around 20 in the week that followed, and then dropped precipitously to six claimed attacks in the week following November 18. 

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The study offers a frank assessment of the reason for the decline in Iraqi attacks, namely that “the Iraqi muqawama [resistance] are terrified, as they should be, of Israel turning its intelligence gaze upon them in the same way it has focused on Palestinian groups and Lebanese Hezbollah.”

The think-tank report quotes a statement by Ktaeb Hezbollah leader Ahmed al-Hamidawi on its Telegram Channel Kaf, in which he appears to tacitly acknowledge his movement’s acquiescence to Lebanese Hezbollah’s right to conclude a separate ceasefire with Israel (as subsequently took place). According to Hamidawi “the final decision rests with our brothers in Hezbollah, as they are more aware of their immediate and long-term interests.” 

WHAT CAN be learned from the rather panicked response of the Iraqi system to a single letter from Israel’s foreign minister? Firstly, employees of Israel’s somewhat sidelined, resource-starved and toothless Foreign Ministry may draw comfort from the fact that someone, at least, appears to be taking their boss’s pronouncements very seriously. 

Secondly, and more seriously, the response of both the Iraqi government and the Iran-supported militias tell us something important about Iran’s regional project, and its strong and weak points. 

Regarding its strengths – the official Iraqi government’s efforts to distance itself from the militias, while clearly exercising no control over them, tell us who really controls Iraq. The government of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al Sudani rests on the support of the pro-Iran militias, in their political iteration as the “Coordination Framework,” for its survival. 

Quite apart from lacking any coercive instrument against the militias, Sudani is dependent on them for his job. This reality, which resembles the situation in Lebanon in its key essentials, is testament to the efficacy of Iran’s model when it comes to taking control of Arab states from within, and turning them into instruments of Tehran. 

The weakness of Iran's alliance 

But the efforts of both the government and the militias to avoid Israel’s attentions, as showcased by their response to Sa’ar’s letter, also attest to a weakness on the part of Iran’s alliance, which is likely to be remembered as a central lesson of the conflict of the last year – namely, the very notable inferiority of this alliance vis-à-vis its Israeli and Western enemies in the sphere of conventional warfare. 

As Hamas, Lebanese Hezbollah, and Iran itself have learned – and as the Iraqi Shi’ite militias seem keen not to have demonstrated to them, too – once the conflict between Iran and its alliance of militias, and Israel and the West turns to the conventional sphere, the former are at an enormous disadvantage. 

This is the reason for the failure of Iran and its allies to launch an all-out war in defense of their ally in Gaza. It is the reason for Hezbollah’s agreement to a separate ceasefire with Israel, in direct contravention of its stated reasons for entering the fight on October 8. 

It is the reason for Iran’s failure to carry out its threatened major response to Israel’s air raids on October 26. And it is the reason for the Iraqi government and militias’ panicked response triggered by a single letter from Israel’s not especially influential foreign minister. 

This lesson should not, of course, produce complacency. But it does indicate that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s regional project is most effective and consequential when directed against its own population and against the populations of the states that it has swallowed up by its proxy and irregular warfare methods. 

When faced with a powerful external enemy, its performance and the responses of its various components, as displayed by the undignified scramble in Iraq this week, are considerably less impressive.